The CAD Wave

The buzz in the social media scene the last couple weeks has been Google Wave. This is a new technology coming out from Google that essentially reinvents email. Whether this is the best thing since email itself or just the next in a line of overhyped new technologies is still to be seen.

You can follow the link above for a long video on Google Wave or watch this far simpler version:

For me, I’m seeing enough good ideas here to at least start talking about it. For those of us working in product design, the potential for collaboration is probably the biggest. Right now Google Wave access is limited (you can request an account here) but the hand full of CAD people that have got access quickly found each other and quickly begin...well, collaborating.

The CAD wave above is one example. This is a public wave that has grown and morphed over the last week. The simple question… how might Google Wave be used in Product Design? I’ve seen a few more private, semi-private and public waves around CAD get started too. I’ll post more about them later as the landscape becomes more clear.

Another interesting aspect of Google Wave is that it is more of a framework than an application. Others can easily extend it into other domains via Gadgets, Robots, and hosting of the wave. Will we be seeing CAD based extensions? Time will tell.

BTW, Josh Mings is using Google Wave for an upcoming article on Google Wave (kind of clever). Be sure to check out Develop3D for more to this story. I suspect we will be seeing quite a few PLM articles and blog posts on this technology.

P.S. Hey Google, how about some invites for more CAD and design folks? We have collaboration to do!